Laurel Massé

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Easter

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May 14, 2016 by Laurel Massé

Home another way

The long afternoon sun is shining on grass as green as my memories of Ireland. Mrs. Peel (my cat) is asleep in a splash of light, a simple pleasure I have wanted for her since she first came into my life four years ago. And for me, too –  I am always especially happy in rooms that are light-drenched, with windows that open. I have that here, though drenched is too extravagant a word. It’s one window shy of that.

But I have always had a housing problem in my head. I move a lot, sometimes down the road, sometimes across the country; even, as a child, out of the country. I used to think I would find The Place, the Home-Sweet-Home, the Where-I-Belong, and then live there the rest of my life. So, each time I moved, I hoped to stay, to unpack and not repack my books, to hang up and not take down my art.  I’ve wanted a physical forever home, with a comfy chair, and my books and my teapot, and lilacs, and a life that would let me stay home. Isn’t that sweet?

That homely dream is not the life I have. It neither has been, nor is it likely to be. It’s my dream, but it’s someone else’s life, someone else’s cottage, something I read in a book, or saw in a film.

For the last three or four years I’ve lived in a series of places that I knew from the start would be temporary no matter what I did – a couple of house-sits, an artist’s residency at a school in another state, that kind of thing. All the while, I yearned for Home. I cried. I prayed. I prowled Craigslist.

By the time I found my current living space, something had shifted in me, and this Eastertide, I finally noticed it. I have wandered, but am not lost. I’ve had a home all along, a home that, as St. Augustine said, “does not fall down when we go away” (he also wrote, “My heart is restless till it rests in Thee,” and yes, that’s true for me).

I find I am now more at peace with “temporary” than I would ever have imagined possible. Maybe I’ll live here for a long time. Maybe I won’t. I care, but somehow I don’t care one way or the other.

Not today.

Posted in Dreams, intuitions, life rhymes, Easter, Home, Mrs. Peel, News, Travel · 14 Replies ·

Archives

April 29, 2014 by Laurel Massé

And it is good

Happy Easter! Yes, still! Easter lasts fifty days in the church calendar, and will not end this year until (counts on fingers) June 8th! 

I re-enter the world of bloggery with this offering to you all. Draw sweet water from the well, make yourself a cup of tea, and settle in to listen to some extraordinary music. I want – I fervently desire! – to sing in a performance of this work. Watch the video, and you'll hear and see why.

 

Vespers for St. Hildegard was created by British composer Stevie Wishart, who wove in passages from Hildegard of Bingen's music. I especially love the groundedness – as in both feet firmly planted on God's green earth – of the singing. I long ago grew weary of celestial fluttering soprano renditions of Hildegard's music, even though they were often beautiful. Hildegard was a mystic, yes, a nun, a writer, and composer and painter… and an herbalist who had had her hands in the dirt caring for plants and soil. It is that side of her that I've been longing for. Here are highly skilled yet unmannered, low-pitched, strong voices of women with real bodies. I am in earthy bliss.

Thank you, Terri Windling, for introducing me to this music. If I could draw like you can, I would send you a picture of me with mud on my feet, and a smile on my face and musical notes swirling all around me.

 

Posted in Easter, Mastery, Music, Saints, Singing, singers, Voice, Women, Worship · 1 Reply ·

Writings…

  • Leaves on the wind
  • Home another way
  • Epiphany
  • The Feast of the Holy Innocents 2015
  • Four colley birds

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